The Young Demographic

Anthony Harris, left, is transitioning from PR to the sports and entertainment industry in New York City. Mikelah Rose is starting her own online marketing company in Stamford.

Two Stamford young professionals have founded the M.O.D. Success Series (Motivation + Opportunities + Drive = Success), a monthly networking series for career minded young professionals. 

This isn’t your typical happy-hour-exchange-business-cards-over drinks gathering. Come prepared to learn do some serious networking. 

M.O.D. had its first event last night at the Sundance Cafe in Stamford. Local entrepreneur Rick Fidelli, co-owner of MidState Printing Group, spoke about the challenges of starting his own business and gave out a few networking tips. About 25 people came to the event and the response was mostly favorable, M.O.D. cofounder Anthony Harris, 25, said. The YPs in attendance represented the media, non-profit, investment banking and motivational speaking industries to name a few.

 Harris and Mikelah Rose, 25, are both Stamford natives and attended Stamford High. They began discussing creating an educational networking group a few months ago.

“Anthony and I are from Stamford and we both have worked in New York and have seen the best of both worlds,” Rose said. “We found that for young people in this area, there are lots of social events, but we didn’t see abundance of young people trying to network in terms of moving their career along.” 

They chose a speaker with broad appeal for their first event, but future speakers will be more industry specific, so they attract different groups of younf proffesionals. 

“If we have the same people attending every single month, it will defeat the purpose,” Rose said. 

For now the events will all be in Stamford, but as the group expands, they may move to other parts of the state, Harris said.